1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a simulation system in which three-dimensional models of peripheral equipment and workpiece which are placed near an operating machine to be simulated such as a robot and a machine tool are generated, and these models are used with a three-dimensional model of the operating machine to be simulated.
2. Description of the Prior Art
At the time of using a simulation system for application studies of a robot system, cycle time simulations, or the like, first a creation of three-dimensional models of the hand, the peripheral equipment, and the machine of interest is necessary. To that end, an operator has to directly create three-dimensional models by means of a simulation system, often causing much time to be spent till the simulation is performed.
In an alternative practice, before performing the simulation, three-dimensional models of the above described operating machine (a robot, a machine tool, etc.), its peripheral equipment, and workpieces are created on a CAD system separated from the simulation system, and are inputted to the simulation system.
As so far described, considering the facts that three-dimensional models needs to be created separately even though two-dimensional geometric information created by a separate CAD system is available, that users of a simulation system for robots or the like are not necessarily exploiting a three-dimensional CAD system, and that two-dimensional CAD systems have become into widespread use, it is speculated that efforts for creating three-dimensional models will be substantially reduced if machine drawings of workpieces and others created by a two-dimensional CAD system can be exploited.
In particular, in creating three-dimensional models of workpieces of a complicated shape, the risk of making model errors is expected to be reduced.